Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  "Emma, what's going on? What's happening?"

  But Emma wouldn’t listen. She just grabbed them both by the arms and pulled them toward the house.

  "No time, just move."

  "But Emma—"she protested, only to get cut off.

  "We need to move, Emma said insistently, letting the urgency in her eyes tell them how serious things had gotten. "We need to grab all of the supplies that we can carry and leave."

  "But what's going on?" Chase asked stubbornly, not moving an inch.

  She sighed, exasperated and worried. "We don’t have time, Chase. We were late. Several cars with people with guns are parked on a street in the west side of town. They're gathering people, I don’t know for what. I don’t want to do this, but if we stick around, they'll find us eventually. We don’t know if there are more elsewhere, but there could be..."

  In fact, there had to be. Their town held way too many people to all fit in four vehicles. There were probably other people elsewhere, doing the same on other streets. Which meant they had to be gone long before that, and they had a lot to carry.

  Merry was panicking. Emma heard her breathing pick up, and looked at her to see her eyes wide, her face looking sallow. She caught her by the tops of her arms and shook her a little before she lost herself to a panic attack. She wasn’t sure how long they had, but it was not enough to let Merry go into an attack.

  "It'll be fine, Merry," she said reassuringly. "We're all going to be safe if we leave."

  Merry whimpered. "I don’t want to leave my home and Janice's body, Emma."

  "It's fine, I promise. We will definitely come back, when it's safer, we'll return. I don’t want to leave home either."

  But they had to, and quickly.

  "Both of you just please. Get whatever you can, Chase break down the shed and take as much as you can, preferably everything. Get somebody to help you guys, I'll be going after something else."

  Chase nodded, taking Merry with him and some of the other guys. With some of the other people going on door to door, they got a few more passengers. Most people refused to leave their houses, they probably had some idea of what was going on and didn’t want to leave their houses, but that couldn’t be helped.

  With Merry gone, Emma began to cry. And she knew that she'd finally been broken by Janice's death. The thought of leaving her behind was too much, even though all she was leaving was a house full of memories and a body buried in their back yard. They couldn’t exactly take her along.

  Chase turned up, pulling her into a hug and startling her for a moment. She'd given him a job to do, so why was he there? But she didn't stop him as he held her close, carding his fingers through her hair.

  "It's okay, Emma," he murmured. "We'll get through it together."

  His words were enough to give her a bit of a boost. They didn’t have time for this. She sent him back into the house to continue the job he'd given her, and she looked around for whatever else she could do to help.

  She caught sight of Brian running into his house, and followed behind him. Of course he'd take his wife and their kids with them.

  "Emma?" Kellen said in surprise, watching her follow Brian inside in a rush. "What the hell is going on? What is it?"

  "There's another attack," Emma said, stopping to give her the information as Brian ran ahead. "We don’t know how it happened, but they must have gotten around us somehow. It's only a matter of time before they get here, and they have a lot of people."

  Kellen looked ready to panic, her eyes shooting to the way her husband disappeared to. "What are we doing?"

  At least she was quick on the uptake.

  "We're leaving. We have some cars, and I'm taking all the food my family has stored, it should last us a while. Just help me get your kids and some things parked and we can go, okay? I don’t know how much time we have."

  Aware of the danger, Kellen moved quickly, Emma heading the way Brian disappeared to.

  She helped him pack up for their kids things, Kellen getting the rest of the stuff and let them run out to one of the cars. With that done, she went and knocked on a few doors herself. This was her neighborhood, so a few people listened to her and came out, and she told them the situation and what the plan was. A few refused to go, but they got enough.

  With the cars loaded and people warned of the impending attack, Emma piled into a car with Chase, Merry, Carol, Barbara and Karen with her kids. They had food in the trunk, but they filled up their space to make room for more in the other vehicles. They were all cramped, but Emma knew they would all be safer together.

  Emma watched her street disappear behind her as they drove away and wondered if she’d ever get to go home again.